Thursday, 31 October 2013

I really enjoyed playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. First of all it
made me realise how bad Oblivion actually was and how good Morrowind
actually was. Skyrim reminded me of the joy and wonderment I felt when I
first played Morrowind all those many, many years ago. Also, in a world
full of MMORPGs it is a single player experience. Yes, I have drooled
over Final Fantasy XI and Guild Wars 2 but my heart just sinks at the
realisation I can't play it alone, by myself. It might be a personal
preference. So I enjoyed and loved playing Skyrim. I really liked the
way the character develops based on how you actually play the game. My
character is a fairly shit-hot archer and a fairly good spell caster. My
favourite spell? Summon Fire Atronach! I don't like one on one combat. I
like sneaking around shooting arrows into the backs of people's (do
Falmer count as people?) heads. Sometimes it is unavoidable so my
solution. Sneak around and summon a Fire Atronach to lay into them
instead. She has got me out of a multitude of scrapes and I absolutely
love her. To repay my love, it is only fair to do a homage to her and
her pyrotechnic ways.

Actually accomplishing this task was
surprising difficult. This final piece is my fourth attempt to get it
right. The first two attempts were technically good, but the poses I
chose just looked wrong. The less said about the third attempt the
better. Rather than be totally discouraged I decided to tackle it from a
completely different angle. I decided to do something that gave my
darling Atronach some character. Also I moved away from the idea of
having a solid black background, which was a more inspiring move as I
love the background in this work.

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

In my mid-teens I heard that opening theme tune. Naturally it captured
my attention and imagination. Cartoon Network had started showing Dragon
Ball Z. Obviously not the best of the anime I had seen, it was still
compelling and the early episodes were quite imaginative. Cartoon
Network only showed episodes up to the introduction of Trunks and for
years that's all I had. These days it is easier to find these programs
and subtitled instead of dubbed, too! I was able to watch the original
Dragon Ball series which was a lot more enjoyable than Dragon Ball Z.

I
recently watched Dragon Ball Z up to when Cell was introduced. I
stopped watching it because I was tired of the same formula. Dragon Ball
Z suffers from being too repetitive, especially when the are on Namek.
They managed to stretch out five minutes into what must have been two
hours in the end. I may go back periodically and finish watching the
show.

Nevertheless, it is still a part of childhood I have fond
memories of and as I mentioned I did enjoy watching Dragon Ball.
Naturally I decided to do a homage to it and what better than something
appearing to be floating in the clouds - Kami's Lookout. Yes, I am a
sucker for clouds.

Dragon Ball was created by Akira Toriyama and
was originally published as a manga in Weekly Shōnen Jump. One of them
probably owns the copyright.

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

When I was young, anime was rare. In-fact, we didn't even call it anime,
we called it manga. Primarily because Manga Entertainment was the
largest distributor of anime in the UK. Even rarer than anime was
subtitled anime. Yes, I have a problem with dubbing - it's been
controversial at times. As has my love of anime. Anyway, I digress. I
managed to record two animes that were shown late night on BBC 2 some
years apart. The first was the phenomenal Akira. Akira was the first
anime I ever saw. I loved everything about even though I didn't know
what was going on (I actually loved not understanding as well - it was a
breadth of imagination I had never experienced before). The second was
Patlabor. I loved the atmosphere of the film, the pace, the plot and the
characters. The characters were so well developed it came as no
surprise when I found out that there had originally been a TV series. I
have been fortunate enough to be able to watch both TV series' and the
OVA. It took years for me to find a way where I was able to do this. The
TV series is absolutely fantastic. I really don't understand why this
franchise isn't rated more highly. I would put it up there with the
Ghost in the Shell franchise (which is probably my favourite).

So
I decided to my little homage. During my research for this I realised
my original idea of having Noa on Alphonses shoulder had been done to
death and I seriously considered ditching Noa altogether. In the end I
felt I needed to try at my character painting again after doing all
those ABC Warriors. I'm glad I did, Noa turned out great.

I don't know who owns the copyright to Patlabor - one of the distributors maybe?

Monday, 28 October 2013

What's the point of me having a blog if I am going to just leave it to rot? None really, but there is no real reason for me to leave this to rot. Especially as I regularly write blog entries on my deviant art account that could easily be copy and pasted to this blog. I could also post progress pictures or whatever. Maybe some of the stuff on facebook that I write as well.

First up, I guess the blog needs to get up to speed. With that in mind I shall endeavour to find the time to edit my pictures to blog friendly sizes and start posting them. There's quite a few to get through so I'll have about three weeks of stuff I can schedule to post.